Blockchain Changing Banking and Healthcare

The idea behind Blockchain was created back in 1991, but the first major innovation using this technology was Bitcoin in 2011. Innovations using blockchain can affect different industries such as banking, real estate, healthcare, legal, political, startup, video and even education. Although the technology is being used over a wide range of industries, there are still three main challenges that the technology faces which are trust, regulation, and scalability. And if you want to learn more, you can contact a blockchain consultant to do that. In this article, you will explore these three challenges in the banking and healthcare industries.

Most of the public and people with lifelong careers in the affected industries are not even aware that blockchain technology exists let alone understand how it works. This lack of proper public relations has created a lack of trust. Here are some comments this mistrust creates “blockchain is littered with fraud” and/or “it is too complex for normal people to understand”. However, within the past three years, there have been major strides to change this perception. 

Valuable youtube.com videos have been uploaded calming these fears using facts. These videos show that it is nearly impossible to commit fraud using blockchain by breaking down the technology step by step with visuals making it easy to understand. 

Banking 

In addition to youtube.com videos, monetary platforms have begun adopting the technologyьand incentivizing the public to use it. In 2018, Cryptocurrency wallet, Lolli, began offering bitcoin rewards for making purchases through their application. Applications like Cash App, Robinhood and numerous others have also adopted crypto onto their platform. Each having its own unique restrictions and unique set of personal data collection. In October 2020, PayPal announced that its users would be able to buy hold, and sell four cryptocurrencies using their platform. This is a private service with the largest number of users to welcome cryptocurrency into their fold thus far. The news alone made Bitcoins price jump approximately $1,000.00 USD in 1 day. Governments around the world are preparing for the future of digital currency using blockchain technology.

On October 2020, A crypto advocacy group in the United States airdropped all 535 members of Congress $50.00 worth of bitcoin. The Chamber of Digital Commerce (CDC) provided each member with “extensive public online educational training, a toolkit, and resources to Members across all parties to help them engage directly in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.” Perianne Boring, the director of the CDC, said: “Now is the moment for all Members of Congress to learn about and embrace cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, and the best way to do that is to set up a digital wallet and get started on the blockchain journey.”  

Perhaps the biggest news of all for 2020 as it relates to blockchain advancement in society is the release of China’s very own digital currency, DCEP aka E-Yaun. On October 11th, 2020 China tested its DCEP in four cities. The offer was that any citizen residing in one of those cities would be able to download their app in August. Every citizen who had the app downloaded by October 11th, 2020, was entered in a lottery to win a small amount of money roughly amounting to $30.00 USD.

The winners received a deposit of DCEP currency on October 12th, 2020. Following this release, China has a tiered approach to the further rollout of the currency in their country. This move is the biggest validation of blockchain technology so far. The combined effect of these efforts has increased awareness, acceptance, and the general knowledge of blockchain technology. There is still a lot more that needs to be done to earn the public’s trust. Given time people will be presented with different opportunities that blockchain technology provides. It will become normal dinner table talk as each industry becomes more and more affected. Regulations or lack of regulations have kept blockchain from advancing in certain industries especially digital currencies.

The public who is attracted to blockchain cryptocurrencies like the idea that they can be anonymous. Perhaps for criminal activity, but maybe they just like privacy. Perhaps they do not want anyone tracking their every transaction. Governments around the world are threatened by the anonymity that these currencies provide. They are concerned that they will lose power by not be able to collect all the taxes for transactions run through these systems. It is understandable on both sides. The average person not wishing for anyone to know how much they are “worth” and the government wanting to continue paving roads. Fifty Central Banks around the world are working on their own digital currencies that will report back to the International Monetary Fund.

At the same time Europe, the United States and Asia are presenting and passing laws to regulate the digital currencies that currently exist. The goal is to eliminate anonymity and make all digital currencies conform to the same laws as financial institutions. Scalability has been one of the biggest setbacks for blockchain technology. The processing speed is extremely slow when compared to traditional processing speeds. For instance, Bitcoin blocks are mined at 7 transactions per second while Visa and Mastercard are capable of processing 1,700 transactions per second. Until recently the fastest processing speed for a blockchain digital currency was Libra’s 1,000 transactions per second! Then China released its DCEP that can process between 220,00-300,000 transactions per second. Simply put, this is groundbreaking. 

Healthcare

Trust is also an issue for blockchain in the healthcare industry. Patients worry that their information will be shared without their permission or their medical history will be used to deny them services. Some healthcare institutions do not want to share the information because they profit off the additional testing needed due to the lack of patient history or maybe they are afraid to lose your business. A simple example of this is drawing blood when you are admitted to find out what blood type you are. A slow integration and regulation can help build trust in these cases. The Healthcare industry could massively benefit from using blockchain to share health records via data reconciliation, improve the drug supply chains, and support B2B smart contracts.

The industry is moving with caution as they cannot predict how courts will rule when cases arrive involving this new technology. The US government has not yet passed laws to regulate this technology in this industry. In this scenario, the lack of regulation is holding back significant progress for blockchain. Blockchain technology in healthcare faces similar challenges with scalability due to low processing speeds. The high volume of patient data would end up in a queue waiting to be processed. Perhaps China’s revolutionary discovery of how to increase transaction processing speeds up to 300,000 per second can also be applied to this industry’s scalability issue. Time will tell. That is for sure.  There are clear issues that must be resolved when it comes to employing blockchain. Issues that many people are invested in solving. The ball that is blockchain technology is rolling down a hill and nothing can stop the technology from reaching its full potential. No matter where you stand, there is no denying that blockchain is the future.

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